Barbie Trailer is Brilliant

When the Barbie movie was first announced years ago I thought it could be interesting. I wasn’t sold on Amy Schumer being the lead. It feels like that version of the film was going to be more about her not looking as slim as the other models and doing her typical schtick. We saw this movie from her already in I Feel Pretty. It’s not to say they needed a slim actress in the role, but they needed a better in for the film that is self deprecating without hitting the same boring notes that all of those types of films hit. A few years went by and Amy Schumer dropped out due to creative direction. My interest in the Barbie movie went from meh to must see when Greta Gerwig was attached to write and direct.

Greta Gerwig has been nominated for an Oscar for her screenplay in her last two films Lady Bird, and Little Women. She also directed the lead actress and supporting actress to Oscar nominations. Greta Gerwig is the modern Sofia Coppola. Even if Amy Schumer was still attached I’m sure Greta would have steered the film perfectly. The movie even feels like it has been cast perfectly with Margot Robbie, and Ryan Gosling in the leads as the most iconic dolls globally. With all the important pieces in place this movie should at least be successful.

The latest teaser trailer showed us this movie is going to be a mega hit.

The first teaser trailer didn’t give too much. It did give a hint of how smart this movie was going to be even though it is a Barbie movie. By parodying it to the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey there was clear intent that this was more than a cash grab. With the latest trailer we see just how well thought out the comedy is as it opens with Barbie stepping out of her high heels and still counting the Barbie doll arch in her feet. There’s some great wordplay that feels as though it’s coming from her time on Lady Bird.

These two teasers have given us a lot of tastes of the movie. We still don’t know what the story is about, apart from them trying to leave to the real world. They may not even leave the Barbie world and on their journey out it could be like Pleasantville where it just infinitely loops around without exit. The Barbie movie is going to make a lot of money worldwide. This is a property that our grandmothers were playing with as tikes. I wouldn’t think it will hit a billion dollars, but never say never.

What’s your excitement for the Barbie movie?

Robert Ring

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The Walking Dead – A Beginners Woes

Many great shows have come, and yet most have known when to end. It’s hard to understand how a show like The Walking Dead could still be going, and with plans to continue in spin-offs. I’ve always been under the assumption that a zombie show would see survivors move from place to place looking for security until that security is inevitably breached. I mean how else could it go? Now that the mainline series is coming to an end I thought I would finally see what all the fuss was about. Three seasons in and I don’t understand how this show was a movement. It’s absolutely fine. Season one at least gave the characters an anchor to questions relating to a cure, or hope. With the CDC literally blown up in the finale of season 1 it’s hard to understand where the hope for the characters is in this world.

As I continue watching I’m waiting to be pulled in to a larger arc for the characters. Give me a reason to see them fighting this futile future. If it was me I would have ended my life. And I have to say that the most poignant moment thus far was them choosing to live or die at the CDC when it was to be blown up. If there is a reason for each character to be living I want to see what they are fighting for… because as far as we see it, this is the end of the world.

The show itself lost show creator Frank Darabont midway into season 2 over budget restraints. Understandable as the show did set up something that had a lot of potential at the end of season 1 to staying contained to a farmhouse setting for the entirety of season 2. Popularity grew by the end of season 2 to accommodate a much bigger budget in season 3. It seems as though if Frank Darabont had been given the full control he would have continued to steer the show in the stronger direction he cemented in season 1.

I have to say this is one of the ugliest looking shows on tv. I wish we saw more colour than the bleak saturation that is a constant of the show. The editing of the show itself is odd as they will jump cut from what could have been a more interesting scene than the one that followed. It feels like a budget issue and at times it takes away from the pacing of the show and feels jarring. In the future I may give Fear of the Walking Dead a look and see if it has the same shortcomings.

Overall, unless something changes I’m not sure how long I will continue to watch it for. Maybe the drama will strike me or I will find some characters endearing enough to see their journey play out.

Robert Ring

LEGO – T. Rex Breakout 76956

Jurassic Park was such a groundbreaking film to me, and one I don’t think has ever been surpassed. This was the first film that really utilised CGI and changed the future of modern cinema forever. Since then CGI has been used to completely change everything within an environment, but back in Jurassic Park it was just used to bring dinosaurs to life on the big screen in all their glory. Dinosaurs were hella big in the 90s outside of Jurassic Park, whereas kids today probably think of them like dragons and other fanciful creations of fiction. For myself and others, we knew dinosaurs were real and our imagination was limitless, at least we thought so, until we saw Jurassic Park and the horror if we were actually faced with these creatures.

The first time we see the T.Rex on screen is terrifying, even now the scene has me anxiety ridden. It’s such a magnificent movie moment that buying this LEGO diorama set was essential. You also get a mini-figure of Tim, Lex, Alan Grant, and Ian Malcolm. Each of them is covered in a mixture of rain and mud, with alternate expressions, except Alan. I love the Jurassic Park logo print piece and quote piece they have on the front.

Each character has a marker on the ground to show where they belong on the set. I love this for being able to recreate the scene as shown on the box. Even the footing for the T.Rex is easy to place with these markers. Surprisingly this set has quite a few moveable pieces that are not locked down. Both vehicles can be plucked right off the set, however the overturned vehicle is fashioned in place by a perfect lego shaping in the ground for it. That vehicle is also held in place by the T.Rex’s foot, while the other is held in place by cheese wedge Legos.

There are so many fun details to be found in this set from Tim’s night vision goggles, to T.Rex footprints in the ground, and even the chain that held (ahem) a goat. It’s a massive set measuring nearly sixty centimetres in length if you have the tail stretched out straight, so it will take up a bit of room.

All these LEGO images come from the LEGO site, because my pictures look terrible due to poor lighting.

I hope LEGO makes more movie scenes like this in the future and it’s nice to see they are getting into the gaming space as well, with a Horizon Zero Dawn Tall Neck coming next month.

For now I’m going to need to find a space for this incredible set.

Robert Ring

10 Movies to Know Me

These are a list of movies that evoke a type of ecstasy from me. I’m so passionate about these films that they help to define my love of cinema.

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Lawrence of Arabia

This is perhaps the most stunning movie ever made. I have no idea how such a movie was made without the use of CGI. It is without a doubt flawless filmmaking.

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The Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward Robert Ford

I never heard a peep about this movie until watching it on a whim nearly ten years after its release. More people need to see this film. It’s like watching a haunting poem with one of the best film scores ever.

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Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

For many years this was my favourite film. Even after tens of viewings the movie retains the spark of director and writer, Shane Black’s darkly comedic voice.

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La La Land

Musicals are so hard to make good. We only see a handful every year if we’re lucky and maybe a great one every few. La La Land is a great one that combines my love of Hollywood with a beautifully devastating love story. It’s just as somber as it is bright.

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Parasite

Every year I become overly attached to one film that I want everyone to see and last year it was Parasite. Parasite may have been the best film of the decade. I am so very glad that it will be seen by more and more people after winning Best Picture this year. Mum’s the word on this one, just see it.

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About Time

This is no ordinary romantic comedy, and it’s deeper than any other. By the end of the movie your chest will tighten as your tears seep. There’s a scene that you will relate to if you’ve had a close bond with a parent. For me it’s my grandfather and it makes it all the more hard to watch.

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Paddington 2

There may be no better family film than this. If this was released this year it would be nominated for Best Picture and perhaps even win because it’s the uplifting film the world needs right now.

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The Wizard of Oz

Take me to the land of Oz anytime. If I was to enter any fantasy world, this is the one. There is nothing to dislike in this beloved classic. It’s always a source of inspiration for me.

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Beauty and the Beast (1991)

As I watch and rank the Disney Animated films, I’m yet to see anything come close to the masterpiece that is Beauty and the Beast.

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Shaun of the Dead

It may not be a scary movie, but it is my favourite horror movie. All the horror trademarks are here and they’re hilarious. I can watch this on repeat, and I do.

What movies define you?

Robert Ring

Cinema: South Korea

South Korea is not without a colorful film history, one that has survived countless hands from oppression by the Japanese, who sought to make propaganda through film, and to the censoring of content by the Korean government in later years.

seoul_cinema_billboards_1950sSouth Korea is relatively a newcomer to cinema, as political turmoil from the occupation of Japan prohibited filmmakers from making nationalist Korean films, and instead films that were a rally of propaganda for Japan. During this occupation, Korean-language films were outright banned from being developed. The Japenese occupation was to the point where Korean values were forced into Japanese values, even to the changing of family names in Japanese ones. These sentiments do not erase South Korea’s earliest films, however, most of these films were destroyed by the Japanese. This period of oppression ended with the end of the second world war in 1945.

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It could be argued that South Korea did not really have a film heritage until the 1960s, when film auteurs really started appearing, and these filmmakers were not conservative. They liked to push their own creative and political edge into their films to thwart the censorship that had oppressed the nation. Titles like A Flower in Hell (1958) by Shin Sang-ok showed an on-screen kiss, which was taboo. Even in My Sassy Girl (2001), a romantic comedy that ran for two and a half hours wouldn’t show a kiss. While South Korea’s cinema was starting to boom, North Korea, in a famous case kidnapped Shin Sang-ok and his wife in a means to boost their own industry. North Korea’s films resulted in propaganda films, while South Korea suffered a significant loss by missing one of their prolific film auteurs.

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South Korea is one of the few nations which has successfully upheld a national film industry, one that can compete with Hollywood, and the surrounding Japan and China within the South Korean box-office. In places like Australia, there are very few successful films, and these successes are such by making back the budget and then profiting a little more.  The Australian film industry cannot compete with Hollywood films, when “the good,” Australian films are made for a select audience, and “the bad,” try to appeal to everyone. South Korea has had it very different. Firstly South Korea was censored by the Japanese occupation, and then by a new military regime with the thought that media can be used as a weapon of influence unless strictly censored. So when Ghost (1989), the first foreign film was being distributed in South Korea, the filmmakers strongly went against what they thought was going to be another form of oppression. These protestors did everything they could to trouble the release of the film by splashing paint on the cinema screens showing the film to releasing live snakes. This push was somewhat successful and probably the key to keeping their national film success in the form of a quota system. This quota system until 2006 required 146 days of screenings a year devoted to local South Korean films. In 2006 the quota would be reduced to 72 days as it was clear that international markets would not destroy their industry that was stronger than ever by the New Wave.

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The New Wave of South Korean films began around the mid 1990s, in fact it included music, television, and games too. This era was the start of high quality and stylistic films such as My Sassy Girl (2001), Oldboy (2003), and The Host (2006). There are certainly many more, but these are some I particularly like. The New Wave focused on being stylistic and understanding/creating diverse pop culture as South Korea was also modernising. This wave has redefined the future of the South Korean film industry, and the box office has shown twenty-seven of the top fifty grossing films there were made between 2009 and 2014. From a western approach, just look at Oldboy. It came into the appeal of international audiences with favorable reviews as Roger Ebert (2005) wrote on the value of the film, “We are so accustomed to “thrillers” that exist only as machines for creating diversion that it’s a shock to find a movie in which the action, however violent, makes a statement and has a purpose”. Ebert’s statement highlights the significance of everything working for the story’s sake, and not just for the benefit of an audience draw. This puts Hollywood films into a certain perspective where they fall into troupes as a device, whereas South Korea’s long-standing history of censorship has allowed filmmakers to be more respectful of the boundaries they are stepping over and approach violent material for a reason. The same can be said about My Sassy Girl, where some traditions are still upheld by filmmakers when it comes to the lack of an on-screen kiss, which did not trouble the film in any shape, but instead was used to create a quirky romantic comedy that feels fresh because of it. The new wave showed us that South Korea is a flourishing film industry that is unique and is a positive influence of cinema across the world.

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The history of South Korean cinema has been filled with disregard by controlling forces in the early years, taking away artistic integrity in place of pro-Japanese values, and only positivity was allowed in later years before creative freedom was permitted in films by the mid 80s. The New Wave of filmmakers such as Jae-young Kwak, Chan-wook Park, and Joon-ho Bong, are just a few iconic film directors that transitioned South Korea from a certain dictatorship, and into a place that can make creative works distinctive of South Korea. Today South Korea is thriving and expanding more than ever before with box office films at the highest they’ve ever been, and deals that are putting the country into working relationships internationally, while also being amongst them in the competitive marketplace.

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The best film of the year, in my opinion, is the South Korean film Parasite, so be sure to check it out and explore the vast library of films from South Korea.

Robert Ring

Social Justice: The Musical

As a massive fan of PlayStation, I’ve been following IGN alum Colin Moriarty as he went to Kinda Funny, and then created his own business with Colin’s Last Stand. Colin is a die-hard PlayStation fan and has taken his knowledge of the console to podcast the successful Sacred Symbols. On Sacred Symbols, Colin brought in YouTuber Chris Ray Gun to co-host the show, but who is Chris Ray Gun? Well, I didn’t know either, but then I checked out his YouTube channel.

Chris Ray Gun is a musician, a comedian, and he pokes fun at divisive political issues on YouTube. I’ve since watched a lot of his videos and they’re good. I’m not educated enough in politics to know where I fit in, but no matter the group, they seem to be more for antagonizing then helping. The righteousness goes so far that they’ve become the thing they’re fighting for. Chris does a good job at poking fun at the hypocrisy, especially in a series of music videos he’s made called Social Justice: The Musical.

Check out these three videos from Social Justice: The Musical

I’ve watched all these videos on repeat this past week. They resonate with how I’ve been feeling towards social media and journalism. It’s toxic, so I thank Chris Ray Gun for showing us that we can have a bit of a laugh at their expense.

If you like what you see in these videos check out Chris Ray Gun’s YouTube HERE.

And if you want to see a hilarious video of him drinking bleach, click HERE.

Robert Ring

Yakuza All Day and All Night

Sometimes you hear of a critically acclaimed series that is up to like the third or fourth sequel and it puts you off. There is just too much history to go through and the earlier titles tend to be unplayable on the latest console. Yakuza was one of those series for me. I obtained Yakuza 4 and 5 on PlayStation 3 through PlayStation Plus, but why would I start there? A few more years passed and Yakuza 0 was a critical darling on the Playstation 4, which I found out was the prequel to the series. So I jumped in and played it for a couple of hours. It was fine and I put it down for a few months. When I came back to it everything started to click in place. The story was so grounded and cinematic in scope. I was all in. Then I started doing some side quests and things went completely bonkers. Somehow the game juggles the dramatic with the absurd and it works perfectly.

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The Yakuza story center around Kazuma Kiryu. The series is one big grand story so it’s been hard to appreciate when only selected titles are available on the current console. To date, on Playstation 4 we had Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami, Yakuza Kiwami 2, and Yakuza 6. The Kiwami titles are remakes of the first two titles that were originally released on the Playstation 2. The Yakuza Remastered Collection has just been announced this week at Gamescom. This makes me really happy because now the entire Yakuza series will be available to play on the Playstation 4. That’s seven titles. If you’ve never played them you should start with Yakuza 0 as I did.

The series is a third-person action-adventure where you will brawl your way through clans to do the right thing. Every game takes place in the same city, which you see evolve over time. The side quests contain some of the most humorous side quests of any game ever and there are even in-game arcades that let you play some of Sega’s older titles. Each game is lengthy and could take around 30-40 hours to finish the main story, and double that to complete everything the game has to offer.

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You can watch videos on YouTube to see if you’ll enjoy the game, but I think you should give one a go and see if it’s for you. There are demos for the Yakuza Kiwami 2, and Yakuza 6 on the PlayStation Store if you want to get a feel for the combat. And if it is for you, well, welcome to what might be your favorite video game series.

Robert Ring

The Doctor Who Plunge

For the longest time, I considered Doctor Who to be the epitome of geekdom. It was this show that carried on for generations. It’s so old my grandfather was tuning in as a young man, and under the same cannon, it continues to this day. My grandfather is the reason I began watching it. After he passed away a couple of months ago, I’ve been thinking about him regularly. He had a quiet and quaint presence all his life, and spiritually he must be the same in the next life because I haven’t felt his presence. The days grow longer when I think about the end of his journey, so I strive to find a way to make these moments bittersweet instead.

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This past week I’ve started watching Doctor Who, and I’m enjoying it. Before I saw only a campiness, similar to an Ed Wood picture, whereas now I see what I believe my grandfather saw, which were the possibilities. The Doctor can travel anywhere in time with his Tardis, and this makes for some incredibly creative journeys. When the Doctor travels to the past, we get a creative albeit Twilight Zone spin on a historical time. However, when the Doctor travels to the future, we’re given thought-provoking instances that humanity may find itself in if given the time. It’s the episodes in the future that I find myself afterward wishing I could get lost in a conversation with my grandfather in. I could have known him for a hundred years and never quite work out how his mind interprets philosophy, time and space. This is the trait I think he shares with the Doctor. If my grandfather had been educated at a university level, he might have become a great engineer or a mad scientist. I’ll never know.

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I do know I’m going to continue watching Doctor Who, and share in something my grandfather adored, only if to feel closer to him for a moment. I’ve almost finished the first season of the 2005 series, and a further fifty odd years worth of content should I feel inclined. I’m sure I’ll make additional Doctor Who posts in the future regarding the series overall.

Robert Ring

9/11 Heroes Among Us

Sitting in a strawberry juice bar atop the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, I saw what appeared to be an action flick on the small television set across the room. Unlike any action film I’ve experienced with an audience, this one was not garnering its patrons with a sense of awe and entertainment. Things were very quickly feeling real at that moment, and when the second plane hit, this little place had become eerily quiet. I don’t even think glances were passed from one to another. Just quiet… I imagined the entire world felt the same.

A real sense of safety was taken from the entire world on 9/11. It may have been a day true evil was witnessed, but the human spirit was not broken. Everyone was helping each other get through the crisis. Heroes were no longer something given to the likes of fiction, they were people like you and I. Below is an amazing little documentary about some of those unsung heroes. There was so much happening during 9/11 that I don’t think many people even knew of the great feats these men and women came together to do to evacuate Lower Manhattan.

The boatlift of 9/11 was the largest sea evacuation in history with nearly 500,000 people evacuated from Lower Manhattan in less than 9 hours.

This is one of those great heroic stories that reminds us that even when the world is crumbling around us courage and kindness still shine through the dark times.

Robert Ring